November 10, 2004

THREE SIMPLE STEPS

To stay out of poverty in America, it's necessary to do three simple things, social scientists have found: finish high school, don't have kids until you marry, and wait until you are at least 20 to marry. Do those three things, and the odds against your becoming impoverished are less than one in ten. Nearly 80 percent of everyone who fails to do those three things winds up poor.

It was a sunny day, the sun was high above the clouds, the tar-tar ground was burning with heat and the flowers were blooming beautifully in the park. It was the kind of day that could cheer anybody up, something that would make a prefect start to a day. But not for him, he had this heart-wrenching feeling within him. His head was pounding hard like the consequence from a massive hangover and his limbs were feeling numb.

"What's really missing from the lives of Pittsfield's unwed mothers isn't hope; it's shame ... The demise of shame is a far more plausible explanation for Pittsfield's teen-pregnancy problem than is economic distress."

Seems like his view is pretty clear: shame for teenage mothers = good for society. No?

"Steven believes we need to shame and ostracise teenage mothers, for their own good and for the good of society.What a guy."Posted by: Michael at November 10, 2004 at 02:45 PM
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This is indicative of the rhetoric that cost the left the US presidential election....
Where did steven say anything about ostracising?
Michael you are spinner at least and a bad liar at worst.

"Steven believes we need to shame and ostracise teenage mothers, for their own good and for the good of society.What a guy."Posted by: Michael at November 10, 2004 at 02:45 PM
********************
This is indicative of the rhetoric that cost the left the US presidential election....
Where did steven say anything about ostracising?
Michael you are spinner at least and a bad liar at worst.

Michael, quit coming here and being a prick. OK? I am sick of it. And quit fucking women you aren't married to. Get married you irresponsible cad. It's women who have to bear the burden of shame and babies and abortions because people like you don't feel like keeping their dicks under control.

There, feel better now?

By the way, people, the spam I referred to in the comment above has been removed. It came from Singapore, by the way.

As a warning, yes. When the idea of living as a ward of the state is indeed shameful, something to avoid if humanly possible, society would be better off. And that includes potential unwed teenage mothers.

Some years ago, an author--name escaped--made the point about shame in a book entitled, "This Is Going To Hurt".
If you pretend that having babies out of wedlock is just dan and finedy, and if you provide enough money to make the difference between starving to death and living in permanent poverty, you're going to have lots of poor unwed mothers. As it happens, since welfare reform in the States, the incidence of single motherhood has dropped. Either the women get jobs and get unpoor, or they don't get pregnant in the first place.
I have read references to the old days in which the number of out of wedlock births was said to be not so much different. The difference was how many of the guys married the woman in question. Lots more, they say.
There is a part of society which is so bad, a social worker told me, that when a young woman asks about her options, getting pregnant is the best one, speaking practically.

By the way, one of the main components that has kept me a) single, and b) independent is the fact that I would have been ashamed to have let myself be taken in by some man because he sweet-talked me and got me unmarried and pregnant. I'm tired of people fawning all over unmarried pregnant sows who never had a single independent thought in their lives and OMG suddenly they are in trouble! Tough fucking luck, bitches. You have sown, now reap it.

Could you be more obtuse? You're still on the "ostracize" kick: I never said any such thing.

If I had a daughter and thought there was any possiblity she was sexually active, she'd be on the pill the next day. Although my mother is a regular church-goer (and an evangelical at that), and this was her policy with my sister.

IMO, contraception should be more accessible, not less, as well as the importance of actually using it.

You can't read, can you Michael? But nice DIVERSIONARY TACTIC there trollboy. So men come along. Who told the young ladies you are so concerned about to open their legs? Or are you feeling a bit guilty because you've been one of the persuaders? "Honey, of course we'll get married, we just need to see if we love each other first." "But what if we aren't 'compatible'?" "If we love each other what do we need with a piece of paper?" "I'll pull out in time." "I'm sure you took your pill today." "If we do it standing up you can't get pregnant -- it falls out." "The condoms haven't been in the glove compartment* more than a few minutes, honest!" "I can't wear a condom -- I'm allergic to them. Besides, you can't get pregnant your first time and I'll pull out!" "But you can't be a real woman until you've gone all the way."

Please. Don't even try to smarm out of this. You portray yourself as a champion of the Poor Wronged Woman, but you treat them like stupid dollies anyway by denying them the responsibility to control themselves, and try to deflect the blame for their condition on "society" or evil "shamers" who will make them "feel bad," though you don't seem as concerned about how bad they'll feel when they either get an abortion or have the kid and are faced with a) giving their flesh and blood up for adoption (increasingly unfashionable in this day of adults who have more toys than children) or b) keeping the sprog and having no life of their own until they are forty-five years old. But yeah, you're Mr. Compassion.

When the Whitlam government introduced the sole parents benefit in 1973 the budget to fund it was based on an estimated take up of 12500.

Just over 30 years later the numbers exceed 400000.

No one could possibly say that this is a shining example of policy success.

Of course not all are teenagers. But don't believe the spin of the social workers that less than 2% are teenagers. Long term recipients of this welfare payment would have started out as teenagers. The fact is that they are only teens for a couple of years before they leave that statistic however they still remain in the mix.

The social sanctions and solutions that dealt with the issue prior to this "reform" were jettisoned and as a result the numbers exploded and the incidence of poverty particularly child poverty proliferated.

The shame that was being talked about came about because of the financial burdens this put on extended family. There was immediate detriment caused. This was obviated by the massively increased taxppayer contribution.

Adoptions all but disappeared and increasingly were looked upon as a form of child abuse. Children were retained by mothers who were incapable both emotionally and financially of caring for them and large numbers of people who could provide a stable and loving environment were denied that opportunity to the detriment of all concerned.

It is heartening to see the government contemplating introducing reforms to get more single parents off welfare and into work. The biggest reform however and the best poverty breaker would be to stop subsidising the practice with taxpayers money in the first place.

The government should cease all new single parents benefits forthwith and phase out existing benefits when the youngest child reaches the age of six.

No one would be adversely affected by such a policy. People would have to make a rational decision considering their circumstances rather than one tainted by government welfare which has resulted in such social dislocation.

Jesus, Michael, what the hell does teaching contraception have to do with shit? Are you stupid? Look, I am going to tell you this as if you still had two braincells to rub together: it is no longer a shaming thing for a teenage girl to fuck a guy (usually "of age" unlike her), and to get pregnant, and to have the kid. This is true for a number of reasons. However, the effect on society of this trend has been somewhat less than wonderful. In areas that can afford it -- oh, say, among celebrities, who can afford to live all sorts of lifestyles, and even among the upper-middle-class, who can afford an extra baby -- the effects on the baby aren't usually all that bad. But on the other hand, among the less-fortunate classes of society -- the population of people dependent on government for just about everything because they've always been at the government teat -- the effect is for there to be a permanent reproduction of a generally hopeless underclass, not hopeless due to the color of their skin or even their income (some of these people are drug dealers who have as much money passing through their hands as a Swiss bank) but because they just don't give a shit. You could see it if you drive through any project -- any area with those huge blocks of government houseing they built up north here in the US, for instance. People there have all the mod cons -- they've got electricity and running water and shelter -- but the place looks like a war zone and a garbage dump because they just don't give a shit. They were not taught that they owed society anything -- on the contrary, society owed them.

But if you are one of those people who think that graffitti is "art" then what I have just written is no doubt meaningless to you.

Oh and by the way -- here's the method of "birth control" that I found more affective than any other, and it was worry-free (as in -- I didn't worry about screwing up my hormones, getting cancer, pissing people off with my bitchiness, or getting pregnant anyway as "one of those things") as well -- it was the word "no." I never had the slightest trouble in saying it. Can I teach that as birth control? Considering your sneers at "teaching abstinence" above, I think I can guess your answer. In a way you are right -- simply gently suggesting that one wait until marriage is obviously not working in today's have it all and have it now culture. So I go beyond suggesting shame as a contraceptive: let's bring back the public stocks. Why, we can even make it a reality tv show in the vein of Survivor and Big Brother.

PW, sorry man, but watching Andrea have an aneurysm is like crack to me, I can't resist.

Andrea, purge me from this weblog for the good of humanity and respectable conservative discourse!

[If I had had an aneurysm, you anencephalic flake of dried excrement, I would hardly be typing on a computer. But anyway, your wish is my command, O Master -- you have been duly banned. You may return to your previous activity of picking the boogers out of your nose and eating them. A.H.]

I would add one more condition:
Learn English. American poverty statistics have been skewed downward by millions of not only uneducated illegal immigrants, but people who are virtually unemployable by mainstream business because they can't speak English.

The bell curve dictates that relative poverty is inescapable within a capitalist economy anyway.

Andrea, purge me from this weblog for the good of humanity and respectable conservative discourse!

Finally a rational comment from you. Well, as far as I'm concerned, you're just as poisonous to any blog you might infest as Robert McClelland; you're just substituting his "volume" by sheer quantity, and I'm actually surprised that Andrea hasn't placed you on her permanent shitlist yet, because it's pretty clear by now (after we've seen you predictably derail about a dozen threads over the last few months) that you have no other goal here than to be the center of attention. Get your own blog already.

Anyway, enough meta-commenting. Enjoy your abuse at the hand of all the other posters, Michael.

The poorest people I knew still had cars.
And airconditioning. And food. etc...

They may not have had a lot of luxuries but they all had some form of housing (where I come from it's called 'the projects' and many of my friends lived there). It was basic housing but it was comfortable.

I live with the result of this pandering to the left which has created a poverty pocket in my neighbouhood. Several houses were made available to the poor. Who were the recipients?
1)Drug dealer
2)City pad for a transient group who have driven home owners out of houses that they paid for because they couldn't get to sleep with the all night drinking binges
3)The ALP dole bludger who organized the scam
4+5+6)The heroin users
7)Teenage mums.

So my question is;In the long term is it appropriate for Government to nourish bad behaviour and neglect a community to pander to the grievence industry?

The government should cease all new single parents benefits forthwith and phase out existing benefits when the youngest child reaches the age of six.

I don't believe this would work, at least not in the shortish term.

First, because existing beneficiaries would just have another baby once the youngest approached six. I once knew a woman who had a second child because the amount she was receiving was due to decrease once her existing child turned five. This was a woman who would let her little boy roam the streets of Redfern by himself even though he was only 4 years old. She was such a grossly fat lump I couldn't imagine how she would manage to get impregnated again or who would be interested in trying, but there you are. It takes all sorts. At a health centre where I once worked there were several single mothers on the books who had up to six children, each with a different surname.

Second, every ratbag "compassionate" social worker in the country (and their ilk) would be howling about how this measure would cause untold suffering to poor, defenceless, little children. As far as I can recall it was supposed to be for the sake of the children that the single mother benefit was introduced in the first place. Who can withstand allegations of child abuse?

As a first measure what we really is need is some good research into outcomes of children in different forms of household organisation. We don't need yet another crappy study of 50 - 100, more or less self-selected households, done by some academic social scientist trying to keep their publication rate up. We need something well designed enough, and large enough, so that the results could/would be influential. Of course before that you'd probably have to change the composition and research priorities of whichever board decides on who gets research grants. But the current crowd are the ones with the reputations. Imagine the brou-ha-ha if they were changed. Geeze. I'm depressing myself.

And here's another interesting thing. A woman named Myer(s) or Mayer - Susan I think - studied (and wrote a book about) poverty and children's school outcomes. She found that beyond a certain level of family income adding more money made no difference to how well children did at school. What did make a difference was parental character.

So, given that almost no one in the West lives in absolute poverty these days, the best chance kids have of finishing high school is to have parents who are "good enough" parents.

Good girl Andrea, that's precisely the line I take with my 15 yr. old daughter. She knows 2 things for sure: Where Dad buries the bodies, and how to say "No". Also, "duh" and "so what".

I think it makes a whale of a difference, at least down south here, that the girls know they'll disappoint Daddy if they misbehave. It seem like all the young girls 'round here who have trouble don't have Dad around. Any thoughts on this?

I agree completely. I was left at 23 by my ex with 2 small children, one not quite 3 and the other 13 months. I was attacked in my home and got pregnant. Didn't believe in abortion. I went on welfare the 3 months I was out of work. When I called the worker and said that I was going back to work on March 16, he was absolutely flabbergasted. He must have stammered for about 2 minutes.

"It seem like all the young girls 'round here who have trouble don't have Dad around. Any thoughts on this?"

If Dad abandons a girl, or is an alcoholic or drug abuser, or molests her, or does anything else in which he abdicates the role of father, chances are VERY HIGH that girl will grow up to be: a stripper, a porn worker, a prostitute, an addict, a single mother, or at the very least will have relationships with abusive or otherwise "unavailable" men and will sabotage her relationships with good men.

"Steven believes we need to shame and ostracise teenage mothers, for their own good and for the good of society."

So do I. Cruel to be kind, and all of that.

Between abstinence, birth control, abortion and adoption, there is no reason to litter society with bastards.

But just to show that I'm not a negative neddy, here's something else I would do - I would have our culture laud girls who gave their children up for adoption as heroes. Whenever I meet one of these rare birds, I want to give her a huge hug and tell her how incredible she is.

The US' 'War On Poverty' started with the best of intentions. But, for a wide variety of reasons, what that 'war' has done is to help produce 2 generations of people who have no concept of working for a living.

A good friend of mine (from work) lives in the inner city and works with a church group that helps prepare teens to enter the job market. One of the problems they faced was the teens had no role models of working adults in their lives. Their parents, grandparents and other adults were all on welfare.

He found the goal of most teenage girls was to have babies and be on welfare. They were mimicking what they saw the adults in their lives doing. Work was not one of their goals. They were convinced they would be on welfare just as their parents had been.

I favor helping people who need help. I don't favor allowing people to believe they have no other options other than to remain a ward of the state (= being on welfare).

It seems some people who make their own living 'helping the poor' have no incentive to reduce the ranks of the poor. Actually, they have an incentive to do just the opposite. Their own jobs depend on keeping the poor just as they are.

I'm glad, that in this area of the country, we have had church groups step in to encourage the poor to become contributing members of society. I'm sure there are other groups doing this also, but I mention the church groups because I know of their work via friends.

I don't support shunning anyone. I do think we need to put pressure on teens to stay in school, not get pregnant, and get jobs. This is for their benefit as well as ours. I can't imagine anyone enjoys believing they have no options other than welfare for the rest of their life.

You wondered about the effects of growing up in a single-parent family. (And let's be real here, single-parent really means a woman raising her children alone.)

Just a story, not research. My step-father was a foreman at a small machining/manufacturing company. They participated in a program run by the state of Washington where the company would employ a certain number of ex-convicts. (In return for tax breaks, etc.)

One of the ex-convicts they employed had done twenty-some years for murder and armed robbery. (He killed a taxi driver during a robbery.) While he was in prison he had earned a bachelors degree in sociology, and was half-way to a masters degree in social work. Him and my step-father became fairly friendly, and he would share with my step-father stories and insights about his years in prison.

As part of his college course-work he would do surveys of his fellow prisoners. In one of the surveys, he asked his fellow prisoners about the first 18 years of their life. He asked them how many of those years they had fathers/stepfathers in the house and how many years they didn't.

He told my step-father that he was astounded when he got the surveys back. Ninety-percent of the inmates had spent a majority of their youth with no male presence in their home. NINETY-PERCENT!!

This is not to say that if you grow up in a single-parent home you will end up in prison. However, it does say the chances that a boy being raised in a single-parent home has a much greater chance of ending up in the cross-bar hotel.

My sister, who turned 52 in September, just said "No" for years, never got suckered into a bad marriage, and waited until she met the right man. She married Larry last Friday. I've never seen a happier couple.

What is it with lefties - they either lament the loss of, or mock, the very things they've helped destroy?

Oh, one more thing. A recent study in the US examined the lifetime, yearly-average, per capita incomes of people with different levels of education. High-school dropouts earn approximately $18,000; high-school graduates earn some $28,000; and college graduates earn $52,000.

While I'm at it: the average "poor" household in the US lives in a 1,200 square foot abode. The average European family, of all classes, makes do with 1,000 square feet. Almost half of "poor" Americans (48%) own their own homes. Three-quarters own a car, have an air conditioner, a VCR, and a microwave oven. The government keeps "dumbing down" the poverty level.

Chris Josephson said:
"It seems some people who make their own living 'helping the poor' have no incentive to reduce the ranks of the poor. Actually, they have an incentive to do just the opposite. Their own jobs depend on keeping the poor just as they are."

In Australia the Dept of Social Security refers to welfare recipients as Income Support Customers.

http://www.facs.gov.au/isb/index.htm

Like any business they seek more customers and from the schedules in the above link you can see that they have been wildly successful.

You could even be excused for thinking that there has been fierce competition between the managers of the various categories over the years.

Dave S. said "If Dad abandons a girl, or is an alcoholic or drug abuser, or molests her, or does anything else in which he abdicates the role of father, chances are VERY HIGH that girl will grow up to be: a stripper, a porn worker, a prostitute, an addict, a single mother, or at the very least will have relationships with abusive or otherwise "unavailable" men and will sabotage her relationships with good men.

Um, Michael. Last time I looked up "The Pill", it said that it prevents "Ovulation"... without an egg to fertilise how can there be an abortion?

Andrea, indeed there is nothing wrong with teaching the word "No"....alongside condoms, pills, iuds, whatever... problem as I see it though, is that "generally" those who most trumpet the "Say No" option are completely and (sometimes) violently opposed to any other educational options.

If we don't get rid of this absurd idea that sex is dirty and is quite normal, we will have problems like this.

If you teach kids about sex, and treat it as being quite normal, then that will dramatically reduce the unplanned pregnancy rate.

If you teach kids about sex, and treat it as being quite normal, then that will dramatically reduce the unplanned pregnancy rate

Isn't that what schools have been teaching kids for the last 30 years? Has it reduced the unplanned pregnancy rate? Or has it just taught kids that sex is quite normal whether you're married or not and whether you're ready in all ways to be a parent or not? Since one of the more common "contraceptive" procedures these days is abortion my vote's on the latter.

"Andrea, indeed there is nothing wrong with teaching the word "No"....alongside condoms, pills, iuds, whatever... problem as I see it though, is that "generally" those who most trumpet the "Say No" option are completely and (sometimes) violently opposed to any other educational options."

Sex is dirty, Fat_Pat. That's why it's fun. That's also why it normally has all sorts of taboos attached to it. The effort of the Well-Meaning Brigade to "clean up" sex has caused more misery than the cholera.

I meant dirty in a slightly different sense. Nevertheless, I agree, the dirtier it is, the better it is :)

Janice, the problem with teaching about sex in schools (and I went through all that) was the embarrased and sheepish manner in which it was done (teaching AND the sex bit). It caused a lot of confusion.

NOW, you could say that the confusion has caused the problem, but putting your head in the sand and hoping it will go away is just a piss-weak solution.

If we treated the whole thing in a open manner, it has been shown that education IS the one way of solving the problem (to a greter extent). You will still get an amout of unplanned pregnancies, AS THERE HAS ALWYAYS BEEN. In the "Old Days" un-wed mothers gave up their babies for adoption instead of keeping them. Witness the lack of numbers of adoptable babies compared to those times.

Parents, of course, have a role to play, but it seems that the majority of them are too embarrased to get the ball rolling. At the same time we are witnessing a massive sexualisation of the media (though that doesn't bother me) - maybe we are subconciously cringing from society in this regard?

Look, this topic started about avoiding poverty in the US - don't those 3 comments MAKE SENSE?

At the very least, encourage younger girls to get contraception if they are going to shag around. The blokes that get them pregnant don't give a shit, as they won't have any money to support them, so they won't worry about the need for a condom.

The tragedy here is a wasted young-adulthood spent looking after a baby in poverty and condemming (most likely) the child to a similar fate.

``Um, Michael. Last time I looked up "The Pill", it said that it prevents "Ovulation"... without an egg to fertilise how can there be an abortion?''

Depends on the chemical makeup of the pill. Some of them suppress ovulation. Some others, with weaker dosages of hormones, allow conception but not implantation to occur, so what you get it a early miscarriage.

And this, from Butch, surprised me:

``While I'm at it: the average "poor" household in the US lives in a 1,200 square foot abode. The average European family, of all classes, makes do with 1,000 square feet.''

My husband and I have lived in an 800-square-foot house (with only one bathroom, BTW) since 1983 and raised all five of our children here. It did get a little crowded at times; at one point the master bedroom held 3 of the kids and my husband and I slept in what was supposed to be a little office room. We managed, though. And I imagine that thanks to their early upbringing my two dot-mil sons find their present barracks to be delightfully roomy ;-)

Consider this: The rates of poverty in the United States might go up or down depending on the economy, but many people who qualify as "poor" are not the same ones on the list every year. They move up and out. Poverty in the US is not a permanent situation for most who can and do strive for something better. So another commenter may have a point that "relative poverty" is part of a capitalist economy. However, the beauty of the capitalist economy is that poverty doesn't have to be permanent.

Furthermore, if you have a look at who qualifies as "very low income," "low income," and "moderate income" you might be shocked. I administer an income qualified housing rehab program in a small suburb of Los Angeles. One of the first requirements for recipients of funds is that they must OWN their home. So, people who own their own homes, no matter how humble, can still qualify as "poor" or "very low income." "Relative poverty," indeed.

"Some others, with weaker dosages of hormones, allow conception but not implantation to occur, so what you get it a early miscarriage"

Once again, how can there be any miscarriage/abortion if implantation has not occurred?

I'm concerned that a couple of new posts that ignore *that* little gem will allow the bigots to hop in and argue based on this false truth.

C'mon folks, what is wrong with at least trying to persuade kids to avoid getting pregnant to early in life? I'll tell you why, because then we won't get a new generation of drones and consumers that are brainwashed by advertising!

Fat_Pat, you sound like you dropped in straight from the 50s. I can tell you that here in the States "teaching kids that sex is normal" has gone on for quite some time. I went to school in the 70s and had the requisite sex education and it was not taught in "an embarrassed and sheepish manner." We even had a woman come in from Planned Parenthood and a man from an anti-abortion group to give us both sides of the abortion debate. Sounds like your paradise, eh?

Well-- let's fast-forward to today, shall we? Not satisfied with promoting sex education, our cultural mavens gradually began to push the idea that sex was not only normal and desirable, but should be engaged in as soon as possible so as to avoid being known by the awful term "virgin." The idea that maybe teenagers and yes, even people in their twenties who were not married, could possibly have better things to do than shag like beasts 24/7 is a heresy to the doctrine of the Church of the Holy Gonad. The mini-skirts and other fashions of the 60s that people used to gasp at now look nearly as prudish as nun's habits compared to what teenage and preteen girls are wearing. And don't get me started on teenage boys; it makes me nostalgic for the relative civility of the Greg Brady/Ted Nugent look. At least underwear wasn't supposed to be a visible part of the outfit.

The problem isn't that sex is taught as something "normal," it's that the culture that shrieked about how awful it was that they were (supposedly) made to be uncomfortable about sex when they were children are still acting as if they are living at home with disapproving mum and dad. I wouldn't care except that it has resulted in twelve-year-old kids running around in hooker and thug wear, and the ascendancy of the notion that pleasure is the law. Beware of what you ask for.

Stopping young people getting pregnant is the goal I would have thought.

How that is achieved is up to the individual. Never assume anything with only a few facts. Methinks that the current attitude towards sex is more driven by advertising and the like. In OZ, we have ranges of underwear (G-Strings etc) marketed (?) at under 12's - Tweens I gather is their title - and the whole "Urban Whore" thing is happening at that age.

That is where a lot of the problem starts. As for teenage boys, they'll shag anything with a heart-beat. Nothing has changed in that regards.